The Vasco Da Gama

The Vasco da Gama, the only ironclad of the Portuguese government, 1890. '...the only armoured ship of war belonging to Portugal is the Vasco da Gama, named after the famous maritime hero, the discoverer of the route by the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies...The ship was built in 1876 for the Portuguese Government by the Thames Ironworks Company; the engines were made by Messrs. Humphrey, Tennant, and Co. The dimensions of the hull are 200 ft. length. 40 ft. width of beam, with a water-displacement of 2422 tons, and 18 ft. mean draught of water. The engines are of 3605 indicated horse power, working two screw- propellers, which give a speed of 13 1-3 knots an hour; the storage of coal is 300 tons. The. armour belt of the hull is nine inches thick, and the central battery is protected by ten-inch plates. This ship carries, in the central battery, two breech-loading Krupp rifled guns of 26 centimetres calibre, each weighing eighteen tons; also two guns of half that size, three breech-loading rifled Armstrong forty-pounders, and one mortar. The Portuguese Navy possesses twenty or thirty unarmoured corvettes and gun vessels, mostly of small dimensions and feeble armament, with a few torpedo-boats'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890. Creator: Unknown. (Photo by The Print Collector/Heritage Images via Getty Images)